CfP: International Workshop “Religious guides to urbanity” (Max-Weber-Kolleg; Erfurt, 11-12 June 2020)
Call for Papers
International workshop organized byHumanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations” (funded by the German Research Foundation – FOR 2779) at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies – University of Erfurt
Religious guides to urbanity
Erfurt, 11-12 June 2020
Conveners: Martin Christ and Emiliano R. Urciuoli
We invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Religious guides to urbanity’. This workshop focuses on the regulation of urban life through orders, ordinances, instructions and other forms of written authoritative communication that are spurred by religious motivations, betray religious concerns, or target religious behaviors and misbehaviors. It takes abroad chronological and cross-cultural view in order to compare urban productions as diverse as anti-idolatrous regulations authored by late antique Christian and Jewish religious specialists, instructions like the Muslim hisba,council orders of early modern European towns (Polizeyordnungen), andother textualized strategies to promote and/or impose a ‘safe urban life’.
As suggested by the notion of ‘urban religion’, which considers the spatially informed dialectic of co-production of urban life and religious communication, the focus of the workshop is twofold: on the one hand, it addresses the regulation of religious life and the ways in which religious texts aim to shape the urban conditions of living, and on the other hand it looks at how urban spaces, actors, and ideals of urbanity generate more or less binding projects of religious normativity.
The workshop takes a source-based approach and seeks to take a close look at individual sources and their interpretation to enable meaningful comparisons across cultures past and presents.
Abstracts should be 300 to 500 words in length. The deadline for submitting an abstract is 15 February 2020. We hope that the publication of the papers after the conference will be a cornerstone in the emerging field of urban religion.
Conference room and accommodation will be provided at the Augustinerkloster (Augustinerstraße 10) in the historical centre of Erfurt. Travel expenses will be refunded according to the Thüringer Reisekostengesetz (economy flight, 2nd class train ticket).
Abstracts and any queries can be submitted to:
Emiliano Urciuoli
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter / Junior Fellow
Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
Steinplatz 2
99085 Erfurt
